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Talk:Michael K. Frith drawings
Fraggle sketches Fraggle Rock: Complete Third Season includes 50-some-odd sketches that I don't want to see end up in here. Most of what's here has been collected from miscellaneous and/or obscure sources. The Fraggle season 3 set specifically set out to make a Frith gallery commercially available and it would be really bad mojo for us to include any of those here. I'm going to add a note to the page that mentions the set as a See Also. —Scott (talk) 16:38, 15 September 2007 (UTC) :I agree with that. The purpose of this was to grab images from old Henson.com pages before they were lost or from out of print books, and the like, for research and comparison purposes (and I'd say any images included in documentaries are fair game if useful). The Frith packet in the DVD is more akin to Designs and Doodles, and scanning same would be close to our general policy not to include transcriptions or links to commercially available material. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 17:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC) sketches Question...any reason why Joe Mathieu drawings are included in this gallery? The Seedy Birds, Phineas T. Barnswallow, and Inspector Fortescu Farquar are all illustrations that are not done by Michael. --Nate Radionate 04:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC) :Just a goof. I was trying to see which if any Frith illustrations were already uploaded to the Wiki, found links from him to those pages, and as they only credited Frith as designer, not Mathieu as program book illustrator, and as with my glasses off I couldn't read the signature, I added them in. They're gone now. --Andrew, Aleal 16:20, 26 March 2006 (UTC) ::I love this page! This stuff is gorgeous. Is it possible to include information on where the pictures came from? -- Danny Toughpigs 16:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC) :::Yeah, I'm still playing around with formatting (right now they're alphabetical since I don't have dates for many of them). A lot were salvaged from Henson.com, which is part of the reason I wanted to create this now. The Archive.org caches have broken images for many great Frith pieces, like all of the other Gorch folks, group shot of The Minstrels, and Baby Scooter and I can't get them to appear, so I grabbed what I could of what's left. I didn't like the idea of all of this useful stuff being lost. Floyd Pepper, Dr. Teeth, and Beauregard all came from Of Muppets and Men (and I still need to scan Lips and an "unnamed" critter that looks like a possible inspiration for Gunge), Wisss came from Art of the Muppets, Paul Revere and Ballerina Pig from the Columbia Best of the Muppet Show DVDs (I only have two volumes in DVD form; each one has a "Behind the Scenes" sketch, so if anyone has the others and cares to look, it would be great to add), and all of the Fraggle stuff (except maybe the two Brad added, I'm not sure) is from the Season 1 interviews (and there's still more from there to add). I also have a couple of calendar pre-production sketches from The Ubiquitous Pig (a great book whose final chapter is "A Celebration of Miss Piggy"), and so far we have three Frith book covers on the Wiki (I don't have any of the books, gave away my Sesame Street Treasurey years ago alas, so I can't scan any interiors). :::If anyone has suggestions on how to organize this, I'd appreciate it. I obviously took the basic code from Joe Mathieu, but as the Frith stuff covers different types of illustration and different productions, it may need different handling. For one thing, I'd like to include more notes, like for The Swedish Chef, when Jim Henson or someone else used elements of the design but other aspects, like the militaristic outfit, were dropped; precise dates (Henson.com had a few, but for others, it would have to be the date of the show if we have no idea when preproduction started, and that's not always accurate); maybe eventually some sort of thing where a photo of the actual final puppet/setting/prop is easily linked to, not just through the character page, for quick comparison, and even a few quotes if anybody can find them on Frith's design process. In fact, maybe Michael K. Frith Designs would be a more precise title for this page. Also, I figured having these images in one place would be useful, like I noted with Chef, when/if someone wants to create a Through the Years for some of these characters. --Andrew, Aleal 16:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC) ::::If you've got text for these, then it should go on the character's article page, right? Maybe I don't understand the question. -- Danny Toughpigs 17:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC) :::::Or maybe I don't. The complaint seemed to be about image farming, so I thought some useful behind the scenes notes would help (things which wouldn't necessarily fit as easily into a character page, though some of it would), and I thought stylistic comparisons, as with Joe Mathieu, would be useful. Of course, see my answer on Scott's talk page about the image rights issues, now that I realize that's the major issue. --Andrew, Aleal 17:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC) ::::::In fact, as much as it pains me, I have other things to do this weekend and don't really have time to mess with the discussion (still worn out by Laurence and then the songs template thing), so I give in. I'll leave it for you guys to discuss for a bit, but really can't participate right now, so if you decide to just delete the whole thing for now, go ahead I guess. I've saved the text in word and then just delete the page. Individual images and whether they should be allowed or not can be debated, and then this can either be redone or just forgotten. Sigh. Well, everyone makes mistakes, I guess. Curse you, Joe Mathieu page for inspiring me! --Andrew, Aleal 17:28, 26 March 2006 (UTC) :::::::Aw, sweetie, don't worry. No sighing! Nobody's deleting anything, we're just talking. I actually started the conversation on Scott's page rather than here because I didn't want it to seem like a criticism of this page. That was a stupid idea, though, and I can see how it probably looked like I was sidestepping you. I'm sorry about that. :::::::I love this page. I think the pictures are great, and they look great together. The question that I have really isn't about this page specifically -- it's just that this page made me realize that we're all starting to use pictures in a different way, and I want to think about what the parameters are. :::::::So the big question is: Is it okay for us to "collect" photos on a page? What are the limits to that? If Kermit Through the Years is okay, then would it be okay for somebody to just post a gallery of Kermit photos? Does it make a difference if it's a gallery of photos that are being used on other article pages? :::::::I'm trying to figure this out, and I think it's worthwhile for all of us to talk about it. We might as well do it here, rather than Current events, since we've already started, and this is a good example to build from. :::::::When we started, we came up with the general principle that images need to be tied to text. We try to avoid having article pages where there are more images than text, and sometimes we take extra pictures out, if there isn't enough text to support them. That's what makes them illustrations, rather than just collecting pictures for their own sake. :::::::The "image farm" becomes a problem when the wiki starts to look like a hard drive, where people dump their collections of screenshots onto article pages. It used to be common on old-school fansites to have picture pages, with every picture you could find. We don't want to just collect pictures. :::::::So the boundary that we're trying to find is the line between illustration and image farm, and I think the key is having the picture connected to text. I think the Joe Mathieu cover gallery is okay, because it serves the purpose of being a chronological list of his books. Still, it'll be a lot better when we write some real text for that page -- I think it would be great for somebody to write a big essay on Mathieu's work. It could trace his development with the characters, and talk about his style and his influence. There's a lot to say there, and then the cover gallery would support that. We haven't done it yet, but it's clear how it'll work when we get around to it. The same thing can happen with the TV Guide page. :::::::I think the tables help a lot on pages like Kermit Through the Years and Kermit walk-arounds -- it gives those pages some weight, and you essentially have to justify each picture with supporting text. :::::::So this page can definitely work; we just need to figure out how to give it more weight than just saying "this is a collection of Frith's artwork". I'm glad we're having this discussion, because it's helping me to clarify how I think this stuff works. What do you guys think? -- Danny Toughpigs 18:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC) ::::::::Yeah, it's definitely a dumping ground page right now (which frankly, I think Joe Mathieu is too, but the dates definitely help, and I guess in a way covers are different). My fault for starting a project when I knew I didn't really have time to do all the writing and stuff. I'd sort of hoped to do it a little at a time, inconspicuously, as happens with a lot of projects here, but I guess now I'm forced to do something with it right now. Plus I'm not sure how to break up the gallery. I could just use seperate gallery codes and text in between, and I'll try that, but it looks choppier and also makes it harder when there's not enough images to fit into a row without looking teeny. I'm more concerned about the image rights issues Scott mentioned, though. Like I said, most of it's from what's left of the Archive.org caches of the Feature Creature sketches (at least 8 or so Frith sketches from there are already lost entirely). For the book scans, I mostly use Of Muppets and Men since it's long out of print, not likely to be reissued, and I've generally only been using the behind the scenes photos and such in a clearly informative context (which is why I haven't scanned the Wally Boag image). I have been using The Works more lately, though (the Puppetman photo came from there). So maybe I need clarification. Which is the biggest concern with this page right now, the fact that it has a few book scans and some DVD grabs (and those I really think should be okay if only because it's sanctioned for everything else), or the fact that those images aren't as clearly contextualized in an informational context just yet? --Andrew, Aleal 21:49, 26 March 2006 (UTC) :::::::::My concern was the informational context. Scott's may be different. Like you've said, we have a ton of pictures from books and DVD screenshots, so I don't see any problem with using those pictures here. I think probably the word "Gallery" was what raised the flag for me originally. Is it okay if I change it to "Michael K. Frith Sketches"? (I hope so, cause that's what I'm about to do.) :::::::::So that being said, I think what you've just done with the page is perfect. There's a context, the shows are split up, there's plenty of supporting text. This is an awesome page, and I'm going to put it up on Today on Muppet Wiki. -- Danny Toughpigs 23:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC) ::::::::::Oh, I also moved it to the Behind the Scenes category. I think it's a better fit than Lists. -- D. Toughpigs 23:30, 26 March 2006 (UTC) ::::::::::Sketches, or Designs, is a better name, I agree. Like I said, though I'd been wanting to do this, I started it late at night, so I just used the easiest title, ala the "Joe Mathieu Gallery." I had to remove Sam the Robot as the sole Sesame image, and given Frith's more peripheral role in Sesame at that stage, but the Muppet Babies section still looks sad. I did my best to make this a supplement to the Michael K. Frith and character pages, not repeating info whenever possible, though some elements of it might be useful to incorporate into the actual pages (while the Fraggle Rock stuff is neat, I'm not sure how easy it would be to include it in the current page). Eventually, I'd like to have more merchandising art as well (I have two or three scans for now, yet to be added), within a specific context of showcasing, for example, the development of Miss Piggy's more purely glamour fashion model, "beauty icon" side. And yeah, again, lists was just a stopgap due to tiredness. Sometimes the fast pace of the Wiki is a little too fast! Though in this case, forcing me to utterly revise this rather than a little at a time was certainly a good thing. Actually, once further bugs are worked out, it might be a good standard if we wanted to do this for other designers. A Jim Henson gallery would be cool, though I'm not sure yet how to do it in such a way that it's not basically just repeating everything in Designs and Doodles (which would then indeed go beyond fair use), though I think there's enough Henson.com stuff to have a start. Something like this for John E. Barrett might also be cool, especially as I picked up a ton of info from the Muppets Say Cheese exhibition, but only if like in this case, it would overwhelm Barrett's own page or if divided according to, say, art homages, advertising pieces, calendar spoofs, publicity and pre-production images, and things like Miss Piggy's Portfolio which made it into the actual film. (I'm still wanting to do more with the Muppet Props which are basically artwork; the gallery code might be useful on those pages, so as not to bog them down with too many pictures but still give a full representation. Hmmm...) --Andrew, Aleal 23:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)